Declining ridership prompts X bus cuts

When IU sophomore Melissa Crabtree gets out of class during the school week, she heads outside the Indiana Memorial Union to catch the X bus, where she is usually greeted by a line that stretches down the street and around the corner.

Soon, this line could get even longer.

Despite increased student enrollment at IU, the IU Campus Bus Service cut the number of running X buses from four to three per day in 2012, and that trend continues.

The number of X buses during fall semester should remain steady at three a day, Campus Bus Service operations manager Perry Maul said in an email. In 2014, however, the service plans to decrease the number again to two running buses per day with a third added in the afternoon.

“In general, ridership on IU Campus Bus Services has declined over the past two fiscal years in comparison to prior years, even with stable enrollment levels,” Maul said.
Junior Xander Harty said he is typically among 40 to 50 people waiting in line to catch the X bus.

Crabtree said she recalls having to wait in the X bus line countless times because it’s the best route to get her home to her off-campus apartment.

She usually has to wait for two buses because the vehicle fills up so quickly, and there are so many students waiting to board.

“I feel like it’s a lot more convenient for people who live off-campus,” she said of the X route.

The X route is a University bus route that only makes three stops: Memorial Stadium, the IMU and the IU Auditorium.

In 2012, ridership on the X bus decreased by 15 percent, according to Campus Bus Service records. It continued to drop by another 4 percent in 2013, bringing the board to their decision to drop one of the running buses, Maul said.

The ridership numbers are collected daily by the bus operators themselves, who count each student entering the bus with a mechanical counter.

Maul said that ridership may have declined for several reasons, but the biggest factor is IU’s goal of increasing pedestrian rather than vehicular traffic on campus.

“The IUB Campus Master Plan states that walking is to be the primary mode of transportation for the campus,” Maul said. “Routes and schedules have been restructured to support this goal over the past several years.”

Crabtree’s other option is the A bus, but she said that since it has a busy route and goes down Third Street, it fills up quickly with freshmen who live in the Northwest neighborhood.

Maul said changes have already been made to the A and B bus routes to avoid bus traffic crowding central parts of campus.

These changes fulfill a Master Plan goal to simplify vehicular transportation on campus to only north-south and east-west routes, using the most direct paths possible. In addition to these simplified courses, a loop shuttle would run, connecting the different rigid routes.
“Near-gridlock traffic conditions on campus streets means it is faster to walk than take the bus during most of the school day,” Maul said.

The need to simplify bus routes and create a better public transportation flow on campus comes from the Campus Sustainability Advisory Board’s initiative to reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicles on campus by 20 percent by 2020.

Funding for IU buses comes from the mandatory student transportation fee, Maul explained, and is not a factor that has influenced this recent cut.

Alex McNeilly, a bus operator who drives the X route, said he thinks there is not too much to worry about. When he drives on Monday afternoons, it is rare that the bus reaches its full capacity, he said.

There are times, though, when it’s too full, and he has to turn people away.
Maul said that all buses, including the X bus, are busiest at the beginning of the semester and during bouts of bad weather, which other bus riders said influenced their decision to take the bus in lieu of biking or walking.

“To some degree, crowded buses at the start of the semester is to be expected,” Maul said.

Follow reporter Anicka Slachta on Twitter @ajslachta.